Lake Placid
1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Manchester City Centre)
Released in the UK by Fox on March 31, 2000; certificate 15; 82 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Steve Miner; produced by David
E. Kelley, Michael Pressman.
Written by David E. Kelley.
Photographed by Daryn Okada; edited by Marshall
Harvey.
CAST.....
Bridget Fonda..... Kelly Scott
Bill Pullman..... Jack Wells
Oliver Platt..... Hector Cyr
Brendan Gleeson..... Sheriff Keough
Betty White..... Mrs. Bickerman
Meredith Salenger..... Deputy Sharon Gare
Our brains need a constant level of the chemical
dopamine to stay alert. That's why people can become addicted to smoking
-- nicotine gets them used to a dopamine high which their brains have trouble
functioning without. I am a non-smoker, but now I have found a movie that
made me need a cigarette, by deadening my brain with its unrelenting
dullness.
I would have settled for some popcorn, actually,
or even a bag of Jelly Babies. Anything to perk me up. But once I'm in the
auditorium, the lights go down and the film starts, I always stay put. Trapped,
in this case. Agonised. "Lake Placid" runs only 82 minutes
and yet feels interminable. It's one of the year's worst
films.
It's a monster movie, I guess, although the villain
is just a big crocodile who rips people to shreds in a large stretch of water
in Maine. For no significant reason, museum researcher Kelly Scott (Bridget
Fonda) is sent by her boss to investigate the situation, joining wildlife
experts Jack Wells (Bill Pullman) and Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt), and grumpy
local cop Sheriff Keough (Brendan Gleeson).
The plot is a silly routine of people venturing
into the water, getting munched by the big croc and our heroes solemnly trying
to conjure a solution. Gleeson snarls over every development with a phoney
New England accent. Platt makes pathetic wisecracks. And Fonda shrieks and
jumps, as attractive airhead heroines are supposed to do in cheesy B-pictures
such as this.
Steve Miner, the director of the film, and David
E. Kelley, who wrote and produced, clearly think they've made a movie that
is so bad it's good. But the untalented men, whose credits include such crap
as "Halloween H20" and "Ally McBeal", don't have the mastery of tone needed
to pull off comedy or horror, and so "Lake Placid" is flat and embarrassing.
It contains neither the silly sincerity that makes cheap horror flicks laughable
nor the entertaining cheese of films like "Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?",
because the filmmakers don't have the courage to go over-the-top -- something
that is absolutely necessary to achieve their goal. Most disastrously, there
are ironic wisecracks in the dialogue, just to remind us that the film is
a comedy. It's as if Miner and Kelley knew their general approach wouldn't
work, and so threw in all the comic material they could think up, just to
be on the safe side.
Some pathetic writers will give "Lake Placid"
positive reviews, just to show they know that it's not supposed to be taken
seriously. But the film is not funny or hip, it's a miserable waste of time.
Even its actors look sluggish and depressed. Unlike us, they got paid to
show up.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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